


Coincidence, Happenstance, Enemy Face Off

by UrbanAmazon



Category: Spy (2015)
Genre: Canon-typical language, Gen, Jason Statham meta, Rick Ford being Rick Ford, excessive use of IMdB, the Face/Off machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8885452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanAmazon/pseuds/UrbanAmazon
Summary: Rick Ford isn’t an idiot; he knows there’s no such thing as a Face/Off machine as depicted in the 1997 blockbuster starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.The real Face/Off machine is completely different.In which Rick Ford’s actions throughout the movie bring him to an important revelation, with the help of a better spy.Warning: There are so many spoilers for Jason Statham movies here, I am so sorry.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musikurt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musikurt/gifts).



Rick Ford isn’t an idiot.  He’s not.  People do not rise to the level of national security clearance that Rick Ford responsibly enjoys by not being both incredibly competent at his job and in possession of knife-sharp intelligence.  He is a master of seventeen different kinds of martial arts (including gun-kata).  He holds certification in SCUBA, sport parachuting, the Guinness World Record for longest freeway chase, and level 9 piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music.  He was once ranked 12th in the world in competitive platform diving (only because rising any higher would have risked compromising his deep cover within the British national team).  

None of these things could be done by an idiot (perhaps one or two of them, but not all of them collectively).  

Despite this, Agents Cress and Wright are snickering at him from behind their briefing folders like the pair of vaginas they are, all because of his Face/Off machine suggestion.  However, Rick Ford is not an idiot; he knows there’s no such thing as a Face/Off machine as depicted in the 1997 blockbuster starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, so Cress and Wright can both fuck the fuck off.

The _real_ Face/Off machine is completely different, and is located in a black-market facility frequented by hitmen and rogue special ops agents.  He wouldn’t’ve paid 50 cents, hence his indignance at Director Crocker’s sarcasm; he’d planned to just steal the damn thing.  

Rick Ford knows it’s real, because being of an educated mind, it is the only logical conclusion he can arrive to after years of careful observation in the spy community.

\--

At first, Ford thought it was just a twins thing.  There was this one time he was on assignment to take out members of an international street-racing theft gang.  He’d read the dossiers, memorized every detail on the crew, until he could pick their faces out of a crowded Miami freeway.  While driving.  Backwards.

No matter what Crocker’s written comments toward the excessive property damage and exorbitant travel vouchers said on the final report, that mission had been a complete success.

But in the assignment immediately after, when  he was tasked with exposing a deadly gladiatorial death race business in a private prison, and the other driver he’d teamed up with in order to break out looked _disturbingly_ familiar.  

Twins explained it all.  Same face, height, build, and propensity for driving like a maniac with excessive gunfire in all directions, but different speech patterns and definitely a different sense of humor.  Twins made sense enough, so Ford filed it away in his memory banks and went on to the next mission.      

\--

Example B opened Ford’s mind to the idea of reconstructive surgery (yes like the worst James Bond movie, shut your fucking hole, Cress).

It was the time Ford was on loan to the FBI for their bi-annual agent-swap program back in 2004, and his partner was assassinated by a rogue assassin... only _not_ , and Tom actually killed the assassin and took his identity through extensive reconstructive surgery only to spend three years in deep cover to gain the trust of the Triad and Yakuza leaders that ordered the hit and take his revenge.  True, no one had known what the rogue assassin really looked like in the first place, but the information to take from this example was that completely changing one’s facial features to the point that not even the Triad or Yakuza (or Rick Ford) could tell who you _used_ to be… it was possible, at least.

(Ford ended up crossing paths with that old partner a few other times, but they both were in positions where any reference to their previous assignments would have got their cover blown.  A damn shame, too; Tom had taught Ford how to shift his speech patterns into a really good London accent for the undercover competitive diving bit, but the assassination thing had totally fucked over the whole relationship before Tom could teach him how to change his accent _back_ , so now Ford was fucking stuck with sounding like a London street vendor.)

\--

Example 3 made it all come together.  

To change things up a bit, Ford was once given an assignment as part of an elite thieves crew in order to retrieve a stash of stolen gold bullion from Italian gangsters (as a reconciliatory gesture for all that destructive getaway driving he’d taught himself back around 2002), but one of the crew decided to steal all of the gold for himself, and murdered the crew’s kind-hearted safecracker.  He would have murdered everyone, but Ford had driven the getaway van off a bridge and into an icy lake in the Alps, and the rest of the crew survived thanks to Ford’s aforementioned SCUBA certification and his willingness to share body heat.

Years later, Ford had taken his agency-assigned personal leave (no he had not gone off the grid, the CIA offers a fantastic health and benefits package, so shut up Wright) in order to polish his wetwork skills and reconnect with the mentor that had first got him into the business of professional violence.  

When he finally managed to sit down with Harry, though… Harry looked twenty years older.  He had a _completely different face_ .  Gone was the clean-shaven look, the short gray hair, and the aristocratic features: Harry’s hair was long and white, with a thick white beard and the eyebrows of a dystopian overlord, which was _exactly_ how Ford remembered that ill-fated safecracker in the Alps with the gold.

But Ford had to admit… it was _fantastic_ cover.  Maybe someone had targeted Harry sometime in the last twenty years, maybe he needed to hide.  Who better for a career assassin to hide as than the face of a completely unsuspecting old safecracker… and a dead one, at that?  It was a perfect job, too - so perfect, that Ford felt it would have ruined the whole performance to mention anything at all during the whole visit.

(Harry was taken out shortly after that as part of a messy double-cross, which not only confirmed Ford’s hypothesis, but served as another addition on his list of Everyone I Love That Has Been Gunned Down.)

\--

So there it was: the first thing, plus B, plus 3, equals Face/Off machine.  

Now, based on this evidence, Ford is completely confident that Cress and Wright are just sub-par agents, lacking his own trove of worldly evidence, and Director Crocker is only denying its existence because it’s her responsibility to do so.  In fact, he’s still going to steal the Face/Off machine.  In fact, he’s not even going to use it, because he doesn’t _need_ it, except in that it’s integral to this mission now.  In fact, once he settles this whole fiasco of a shitshow with Boyanov (thank you very fucking much _Beverly Whine_ ), he’s going to hand it over to Director Crocker personally, because Rick Ford knows how to be a fucking considerate and contributing team player.

Step one, quit the CIA.

\--

It’s easy enough to get to Paris by himself.  Sure, Crocker freezes all of his more official assets, but he would be a pretty fucking poor agent if he didn’t plan for such contingencies by way of unreported offshore accounts, extra passports, and a few strategic pieces of blackmail.  Ford flies in via Brussels, rents the most inconspicuous BMW model available, and drives into Paris like a proper tourist (normally, he’d take a Jag, so it’s like he’s a totally different fucking person, _invisible_ ).  

He doesn’t check into the nearest hotel to De Luca’s office, or even the next-nearest hotel, or the fifth-nearest; complete amateur move.  Ford changes into his third-worst suit and makes his way to a shitbag rat-factory of a hotel place called Modiére, the kind of place that would give fancy-pants agents like Bradley Fine the hives out in the field.  It smells like a hemorrhoid and the pen tries to stick to his fingers as he signs his name in the ledger; _Jericho Butler_ is a good alias, hasn’t had to use it once on this planet.  It won’t compromise him at all, here.

There’s a man in a grungy velour track suit lounging in the doorframe of the room next to Ford’s, fiddling with a smartphone in his hands.  “Ah, _vous êtes américain_?” he drawls, voice low and malevolent like a French Darth Maul.  

“Do I fucking _sound_ American?”  Ford gives up on the sticky, chipped key and starts picking the lock to his room with his personal kit of lockpicks.  His best time is just under fourteen seconds, and he can make it look _completely_ natural.

The stranger beams a wide, gleaming smile, just like the smile Ford perfected while posing as a famous football coach with a propensity for lightish red jewel accessories.  He tucks the smartphone in the tracksuit’s breast pocket, camera lens facing out, and gets right up in Ford’s personal space.  “ _Je me trompais_ , I do apologise.  It is, how you say, a look about you.”  Then he slides by, strolling contemplatively down the dim hall.

Ford gets the door open and cases his room from the threshold: spacious, fragrant, and he could probably hide at least three bodies in there before the residual bodily fluids failed to provide sufficient cover.  Also, mini-bar.

He’s about to step in and start his meditative routine of cleaning his guns and naked handstand pushups, but there’s something about that random Frenchman that makes him pause and turn.  “Oy!  What makes me look American?” Ford calls after him.  If it’s a particular part of his wardrobe, he’s going to have to dress extra not-American tomorrow.  He’ll get a backpack.  Yeah.  Louis Vuitton.  Very authentic.  

“Ah, it is not a thing, jus’ that another American tourist checked in down ze hall, but she so shy, into room like mouse, and I thought--” The man shrugs, effortlessly smooth in his steps to the point that his smartphone camera doesn’t even wobble.  “Americans, you always travel in ze packs, _non_?”

Susan _fucking_ Cooper.  So Crocker really did send her.  There’s a flare of anger in Ford’s gut, but he covers it well by slamming the door so hard one of the hotel room light fixtures cracks and dies.  Goddamn it, Ford has a _plan_ .  Does Cooper have a plan?   _Fuck_ no, and going off into the field without a plan is how agents get _killed_ , and getting killed is how agents ruin missions.  He’ll properly inform Cooper of the physical dangers inherent in being an active agent, giving her the information to rightfully concede the field to his greater experience, then scout De Luca’s office, and _then_ he’ll be free to start locating the Face/Off machine, easy peasy.

\--

Cooper does not concede the field.  In fact, she charges through the field, up onto a stage, and grabs a microphone out of the hands of a German Christmas tree ornament.  It’s enough for Ford to admit a small, if grudging respect (even though his own contact turned out to be a double-cross, did not see that one coming).  

\--

After Ford’s efforts to hack into the CIA’s databases for De Luca’s location come up wanting, the next option he has is just following Cooper (the best option is still the Face/Off machine approach, but Ford just has to make do without for now).  He shadows her by climbing into the landing gear of her flight to Rome.  There’s frostbite, and he loses the feeling in three of his toes, but he’s had worse (and he knows better than to light himself on fire for warmth again).

However, it’s still enough that he loses track of Cooper by the luggage carousel, and catches up just in time to see her sail away as a passenger in a tiny red sports car.  

There’s no time to be picky.  Ford hotwires a scooter.  “Ciao!” he yells at a tour bus as he peels out.  Perfect.  It’s like he was born here, and--

Huh.  Whoever’s driving Cooper around, he’s _good_.  Through the screaming and the tight corners and the casual theft of small objects along the way, Ford can barely keep up, let alone get more than a faint glimpse of his profile in the reflective shop windows along the way.  He hasn’t seen driving that skilled since his own transportation days in the French Mediterranean.  In fact--

In fact, that _is_ Ford’s driving.  There’s no spy in the world that drives him, no one at his calibre, and it took him a literal lifetime to acquire said skills - literally.  Ford started driving when he was six.  Stick shift, no less.

Someone _stole_ his driving skills.  

It shakes him.  He parks the scooter and runs a hand over the back of his neck, looking for mind-control probe scars, or the tell-tale seam of a brain transplant operation, which would have made the whole thing make sense, but there’s none.

It shakes him all throughout the evening and into the casino, to the point that he doesn’t even notice Boyanov’s guards until they’re right on top of him, and Cooper has to fucking save the day for the second time in a row.

\--

It’s not until he sees Cooper’s backup in the Budapest nightclub that it comes together, and he knows he’s about to blow this whole fucking thing wide open.  

The man, Cooper’s _driver_ , he has the same face as that tracksuit motherfucker from the Hotel Modiére.  And it’s not a twin.  It’s not reconstructive surgery.  It’s the _same_ face, which means only one thing; he’s been through the Face/Off machine.  

Whoever the backup is, whoever Crocker authorized to support Cooper, he stole that face off of a random Frenchman in order to infiltrate Budapest undetected--

Shit.  What if it’s Wright or Cress?  What if _they_ got to the Face/Off machine before he did?

What if it’s Ford _himself,_ but a future Ford, sent back through a time-travel machine _and_ put through the Face/Off machine to assist Cooper with his superior driving skills?

Holy shit.  There’s only one way to find out.

In the chaos of 50 Cent’s impressive light and confetti show, plus fake fog, plus whatever Cooper’s yelling about as she scrambles after that potential buyer for the nuke, Ford grabs the agent’s sleeve and yanks him behind the coat check.

“Alright, I need you to tell me where it is.”  Ford doesn’t have his gun on him right then, so he tries to modulate his voice into the perfect combination of threatening and trustworthy.  He’d trust himself.  Future-Ford would trust him, too.

“Ah, hello, growly pornstache man.  I am Aldo.  I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”  The man looks him over.  “And you are the Rick Ford my bosomed temptress warned me of.  You are looking for bomb, yes?  We have almost found it.”  

“What?  No.”  Ford blinks, thrown.  Neither Wright nor Cress could pull off an Italian accent so convincingly, nor could Ford, for that matter.  “Well, yes, the bomb, but that’s not important.  Cooper’s on it.  I need to know where you accessed the machine.  The _Face/Off machine_.”

“The… what, growly man?”

“The _Face/Off_ machine,” Ford hisses.  “You know, the thing that swaps out faces, gives you a whole new face!  This isn’t your face, you took it off a Frenchman from Paris for the perfect cover.  I need to get that machine, it’s a matter of global security.”

Aldo’s face goes blank for a moment, then suddenly widens into a beaming smile.  “Ah, you mean like the the movie, yah?  The Cage an’ the Travolta, firing guns two-hand with doves, and the lady with the _sexiest_ feet.”  He sighs dreamily.  “How you say… _woo_.”

“But… no, I mean the _real_ one.”

Aldo nods eagerly.  “Yes, yes.  I watch on the Netflix.”

Ford’s stomach drops, drops worse than when he jumped out of a helicopter without any form of parachute.  He looks closely at Aldo’s hairline, his jawline; at first it’s hard to tell in the poor light, but there’s no scar on that jawline from a face transplant, no hair plugs, and no natural hair to hide signs of either.  “You didn’t use the Face/Off machine.”

“No, _Netflix_.”

But… how else was that possible?  It’s the _same_ face on the man, and a man can’t just completely change all mannerisms on a whim to blend into hostile territory.  He can’t change accent and posture and driving style and… and… he just _can’t_.       

He could torture Aldo for the information, surely.  He’s trained in elements of torture that the CIA officially does not acknowledge (including the one with three rats, a jar of Nutella, and a candy cane), but already he can see the total honesty in this man’s face.  There’s not a single microexpression of deception.  No one’s really that good of an actor outside of specialized small-town theatrical productions.  

It’s impossible.  

Boyanov’s personal security detail yank Aldo away in their dark suits, and Ford loses them all in the crush of panicked clubgoers and confetti.   He’s pushed out by the club’s bouncers along with everyone else, and can’t drum up the will to fight it.

The Face/Off machine doesn’t exist.

And if the Face/Off machine doesn’t exist… what the fuck is Ford supposed to do _now_?  

\--

Well, charging into De Luca’s villa goes as well as fucking everything else.

\--

The mission’s done, the nuke’s recovered, and Ford is sitting on the steps of De Luca’s villa as everything is wrapped up on the lawn.  He’s hand-sewing one of De Luca’s suits to replace the one that got ruined in the water, letting out the legs a bit and tailoring the jacket’s waist to fit him properly.  Director Crocker’s somewhere out there in the scrum, making nice with whatever European badges that might be throwing a tiff for this entire operation happening in their backyard without any kind of joint support, but Ford’s not ready to go crawling back to the CIA, not just yet.  

He still can’t quite believe it; all of his experiences, all the carefully-catalogued evidence he’s compiled over the years, and when he finally comes face to face (oh fuck, he can still hear Cress and Wright sniggering at him) with the perfect proof of the Face/Off machine, it all comes crashing down.  

What kind of star agent can Ford hope to be, if he can’t solve this?  How, _how_ did that Aldo motherfucker manage to get from Paris to Rome to Budapest, slipping from French to Italian without any flaw, picking up driving skills that would take a lifetime of specific specialization along the way?

In fact, Ford sees Aldo still hasn’t left; he’s strutting across the lawn in a distinctly non-Italian cut of suit, heading right for Cooper as local agents snap to attention along his path.  Huh.  That’s odd.  Inter-agency cooperation is one thing, but this is a little excessive.  Ford finishes sewing the jacket lining back into place and watches carefully.  

It’s not easy to see all the details from this distance, but Ford’s visual acuity is on par with a robotic falcon (he took a test).  He’s not close enough to hear what Aldo says to Cooper, but he can see the different accent in the shape of the mouth - the man introduces himself as _Albert_ , with the strong _t_ as used in English and not French, and not Aldo.

That’s _not_ Aldo?

And he says _MI6_.

And right then, Rick Ford gets it.  He _gets_ it.  Everything before this could have been coincidence, but this makes sense.  His heart lifts, he swings the suit jacket on and buttons it, and everything fucking falls into place.  He’s got a mission again, a mission to equalize the powers between peace-loving nations, pull off a perfect performance review from Crocker, and he’s the only one that can pull it off.

He’s got to spend some time on his own, clear his head, and then he’ll get back to work.  

Because MI6 has fucking _clones_.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! I don't know about anyone else, but the moment Rick Ford started spouting off references to some of the more questionable installations on Jason Statham's resume, I was certainly hooked on Spy. It's such a ridiculous, delightful romp. Thank you for sparking the idea to write in it... I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!


End file.
